Lizard Nightmare - Baby Sign Language Story

by Erin
(ND)

When my son was about 12 months old, we had a bunch of those 2-3" hard plastic lizards you get out of the quarter machine.

My son Zyon loves all things science and played with all the realistic looking lizards except for one- a skinny brightly rainbow colored one. He was so terrified of that thing! Especially if we made it "leap" towards him.

It's mean I know but his reaction was so funny, we would get a kick out of randomly whipping it out to see how he would freak out.

Well I think we traumatized him because one night he woke up screaming in terror so we figured he must have had a nightmare.

When we asked him what was wrong he signed "scared". When we asked what he was scared of he signed "Lizard". (Again we had to chuckle because we couldn't understand why just that one little toy was so scary) we were sympathetic though and asked why he was scared of the lizard. He was able to sign because it "jumps".

It was so awesome to know what my baby was having a nightmare about, and why he was scared of a toy!

P.S. The picture above is 1 year old Zyon signing. A friend would ask him to sign this everytime she saw my son.

Response from Babies and Sign Team

Hi Erin!

Thank you so much for sharing your Baby Sign Language story with us! Isn't it amazing to have our little ones communicate with us as early as 12 months old?

We are so glad to hear that Zyon is lucky enough to know helpful signs to express himself. Hopefully it will help other to also see through their young ones' eyes!